


of hobbits and sandmen

by inK_AddicTion



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, The Hobbit References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6579301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch just so happens to be enjoying some fine literature, until Sandy decides that Pitch ought to be paying more attention to him instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of hobbits and sandmen

**Author's Note:**

> i hate being ill. look at this fluffy shit. *scowl*

It was late afternoon in Burgess, and the hazy sun streamed in through holes (from the outside, suitably creepy dark pits yawning into nowhere) bored in the solid rock of Pitch's lair in dust-laden bars, throwing lazy, deep shadows around the weathered patched sofas. Towering stacks of books drifted and zigzagged away towards the ceiling, creating an odd, lumpy shape of sharp-edged books and paper sticking out of groaning oak shelves, bowing in the middles under their own weight. Helterskeleter stacks of half-read books with an assortment of ragged bookmarks scrounged from under beds and dressers poking out like ruffled feathers teetered beside the stained, reddish-brown sofa, comfortable and long since melded to the lanky shape of its owner. None of the furniture, shelves, or infrequent rusty-looking lanterns matched, and the books were all dog-eared and much-thumbed. A fire crackled in the hearth, spreading a bone-deep warmth through the messy hoarder's fantasy Pitch Black called a library.

Pitch himself curled, catlike, against the sofa, with a dilapidated copy of the _Hobbit_ open on his knobby knees, skinny limbs pulled close in the warmth of his cloak like a blanket. His eyes, more gold than grey with the abundance of light, were narrowed in concentration, and as he read, his thin lips worried themselves on his crooked teeth; he didn't seem to be able to keep himself quite still, even his fingers momentarily rapped the back of the book, his nails making a pleasing _tap-tap-tap_ against the broken spine.

It was time for his decennial reread of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, with, of course, its prequel as a little warm-up. He had, like clockwork, reread the series exactly eight times since its publishing, but ten years was definitely long enough that the memory of the details slipped, and Pitch was able to enjoy the story all over again.

Which was, of course, entirely the point.

He was just reaching the first of the end chapter when the warm sunlight he had been reading by (whilst keeping himself safely ensconced in the shadow of his cloak and the sofa throw, of course) was cut off, and replaced by a friendlier, warmer, and golder glow.

“Sandy,” Pitch murmured, engrossed in his book but well aware that Sandy grew quite annoyed whenever people ignored him; being a mute, he found it difficult enough to garner attention.

The little Sandman wriggled and writhed his way down the small hole bored through to the library, sucking in his sizeable tummy and furtively wishing he had not been so generous with those cupcakes that had been left out – presumably for a sprite of faery, but Sandy had judged that he needed the energy more. Nonetheless, they now sat heavily in his stomach, halting his ability to shapeshift quite so effectively and making the possibility of getting stuck on the way down a very real danger.

Unseen, Sandy's plump cheeks burned citrous with embarrassment. Pitch teased him enough, if the skeletal fear-spirit had to get up and pull his rotund counterpart out of the hole, Sandy would never live it down.

Thankfully, however, with another squeeze and a scrape that nearly pulled his sand-robe right off his shoulder, Sandy plopped out of the hole and tumbled onto the floor, landing with a silent bounce onto the sofa and a faintly upset twinkle of sand. Pitch, long nose buried in the dusty pages, was completely ignorant of Sandy's misery, which Sandy judged to be quite unfair. He poked Pitch's shin, and Pitch muttered something incomprehensible, turning the page instead.

Sandy pouted. Pitch did literally _nothing_ with his time, and yet he _still_ managed to be busy whenever Sandy came to see him? If Sandy didn't know better (much, much better) he'd think that Pitch was giving him a subtle hint to bugger off and leave him to his solitude. But of course, reasoned Sandy, everyone wanted to be around Sandy all the time, that was a silly thing to think.

He hopped up and grabbed onto the top of the book, peering curiously upside-down at it. The little black squiggles of text didn't look that absorbing. He beamed up at Pitch, a flurry of sand-signs lighting up above his head – Sandy was very glad to see him, he had missed Pitch very much (now, a little blush), perhaps they could... cuddle? If Pitch wanted to, that is. (Sandy loved cuddling, and cuddling Pitch especially, he had such very long limbs it felt like he could wrap himself around Sandy twice over and still have knobbly elbow joint and skinny ankles and ribs of bone left over.)

“Sandy,” Pitch snapped, jerking the book out of the Sandman's grubby little hold, “You're smearing chocolate everywhere – off!” He lifted the book high out of Sandy's reach (which admittedly was not far) and glared at him from over his hawkish nose. “I am _trying_ to read.”

Sandy took the opportunity to squirm into Pitch's lap, nuzzling his face against Pitch's collarbone and clutching on tight to Pitch's robe in case Pitch tried to forcibly detach him. _Mmm,_ he was so _warm,_ and his skin felt so smooth and soapy. Pitch didn't push him away; he sneezed instead, a stray bit of tickling dreamsand-laden hair drifting around his nose.

“Sandy!” Pitch huffed. “You know I'm allergic to – _achoo!”_

Sandy gave him a mildly offended look. Pitch wasn't allergic to _dreamsand,_ he was allergic to not being grumpy all the time, but that wasn't his fault (here, Sandy cuddled him lovingly), and Sandy was helping him get much better. Hadn't he managed to drag Pitch outside to talk to someone for nearly three hours last week? Really, Pitch's progress was outstanding.

“I hate you,” Pitch muttered darkly. “I hate you and all your Guardian friends. Sometimes I really wish that arrow really had ended things for you.”

 _Sometimes means not all the time._ Sandy grinned at him while the mocking sand-signs danced around his head. A light flush appeared faintly on the high arches of Pitch's cheekbones, and he made a great fuss of grumbling and irritably swiping the dreamsand away, propping the battered book up over his knees and commencing to pretend Sandy didn't exist.

Content with that, Sandy made himself comfortable, pressing his flat nose into Pitch's collarbone and breathing in his scent; it was something musty and bitter, like old coffee. The texture of thee shadow-robe was cool and silky smooth, oddly rubbery, like the skin of some deep sea fish, and very tough; Sandy could fist his tiny hands in it as much as he liked. Sandy's small hands found their way underneath the robe to ghost along Pitch's sharp, pronounced ribs, while his shell-like ear hoped to hear Pitch's thumping heart.

As soon as Sandy's hands brushed his bare skin, though, Pitch yelped and nearly jumped three feet in the air, like a startled cat. _“YEEOW-_ Sandy, your hands are _freezing!”_ he wailed, thrashing underneath Sandy like a hooked fish. “Off- off- _oh sweet stars and suns -”_

Sandy sniffed and thought privately that Pitch was overreacting immensely. So, Sandy was a little chilly. He'd just been out doing his rounds in the freezing cold of the night sky. The least Pitch could do was donate his warmth to a fellow suffering spirit.

True to form, Pitch blew himself out after a minute, settling unhappily back against the couch and shuddering occasionally. “I just wanted to read my book,” he whined. “What have you got against fine literature, Sandy?”

A little guiltily, Sandy lay still and after a while, Pitch returned to reading. For a short time, the only sound was Pitch's soft breathing and the turning of pages, sometimes a _tap-tap-tap_ of nails against the book's spine. Sandy was a familiar, comfortably heavy weight on Pitch's chest, spreading warmth through his body, and Pitch found his eyes lidding. He forced them open and resisted the temptation to pet Sandy's hair as he read – things like that would only encourage the incorrigible creature.

Sandy licked Pitch's neck, having accidentally smeared a little chocolate from the cupcakes there, and Pitch jerked and nearly dropped his book again.

“Sandy!” he shouted, “I swear to the Moon and back you are determined to stop me reading this!”

Peering up at Pitch with his best, sorrowful, round and glistening golden eyes, Sandy sniffled and pouted. The half-formed anger in Pitch's expression melted away, and he sighed.

“I suppose you can't read it from this angle,” he conceded, eventually, “In that case, I'll have to read it to you, and I shan't start from the beginning, since you've put me behind enough as it is!”

He started to mutter foul things about _the things he did for the Guardians_ and _honestly Pitch couldn't believe how he'd put up with this for so long,_ but Sandy's brilliant grin and nodding head stoppered his grumpiness before it could take off. A little embarrassed, now, as Sandy curled himself up with renewed eagerness on Pitch's chest, Pitch cleared his throat and wondered when the hell he had become the sort of person that read aloud to silly little sandmen who were too pretty for their own good. Why, if Pitch had been feeling more monstrous – well, there was any number of things he might have done to such a bold little Guardian, things that involved far less books, and more, well, more things along the line of the corruption of Sandy that fateful Easter, though perhaps Pitch might not use something as impersonal as an _arrow_ this time – he coughed, and found himself unable to look Sandy in the eye.

Sandy, on his part, only tilted his head curiously and patted one of Pitch's burning cheeks. He hoped he wasn't flustering him too badly by asking him to do this. It was just that – Sandy had never been human, and he found the little squiggles they used for writing so hard to understand, and it was so much nicer to just lay here against Pitch's chest and listen to the rumble of his voice.

“ _To the end of his days,”_ Pitch began, his smooth voice rumbling mellow and warm in Sandy's ear, like the brush of a tide, “ _Bilbo could never remember how he found himself outside, without a hat, a walking-stick or any money, or anything that he usually took when he went out...”_

At first halting and uncertain, put off by his unfamiliar audience, Pitch's voice soon gained a rhythm, and he became absorbed in the story, quite forgetting to be uncomfortable at being observed by the Sandman like this. He read for hours, the turning of the pages and his voice the only sounds, the flutters of Sandy's deep breathing against Pitch's neck and his head a soft weight on Pitch's shoulder.

Somehow Pitch's hand had found its way to rub through the silky strands of Sandy's hair, and well, Sandy didn't seem to mind, so he kept doing it. He liked feeling the soft hair move around his fingertips, and sometimes his nails scratched Sandy's scalp a little, but Pitch would always smooth the pads of his fingers against the unintentional scratch, and Sandy's head would push gently into his hand, like a cat seeking petting. Despite his firm instructions not to, a faint little smile quirked his lips and coloured his voice whenever Sandy did that.

Pitch suspected he was doing it on purpose.

Something warm blossomed in him and refused to leave, a heat and happiness that suffused his whole body, like the drench of sunlight without the pain that usually accompanied it. Was this what having friends felt like? Pitch could almost understand, now, why the Guardians were so insistent that books and bad dreams were not company enough.

The transition from day into night passed entirely unnoticed by Pitch, whose eyes simply sheened silver, well able to read in the dark. Unremarked upon, Sandy's skin lit up just a little more, like a pulsating firefly lost in darkness' embrace as the shadows clustered blackly around them. It was only when a tantalising brush of moonlight touched Pitch's shoulder, with gentle amusement, that he blinked and came back to himself, abruptly realising how much time had passed.

“Ah,” said Pitch, a little awkwardly, “I- I apologise, I let the time get away with me. You'll probably want to leave on your rounds, now, Sandy, it was – you needn't have stayed this long.” He stared straight ahead and felt a blush creep up his cheeks. He hoped Sandy couldn't see it. He couldn't muster the words to say what he meant – _thank you for staying._

There was no response, not even the silent dance of sand signs, and Pitch blinked and looked down at Sandy. The little Sandman was snuggled up on his chest, fast asleep, one tiny fist lightly sucked by his plump mouth, curling lashes brushing the smooth golden curves of his cheeks.

“Oh,” Pitch said faintly. “You're... you fell asleep.”

He held himself stiffly, too frightened to move lest he wake Sandy. No one had _ever_ fallen asleep on Pitch before! He found himself torn on being oddly touched at Sandy's trust and somewhat peeved that Sandy evidently didn't respect Pitch's nightmare powers enough. His grey fingers danced above Sandy's temples, wondering if perhaps he ought to teach him a little lesson, smooth some nightmare-sand over those delicate eyelids and watch Sandy suffer and sweat in the claws of Pitch's most vicious nightmares.

Pitch swallowed. On... on second thoughts, maybe making Sandy squirm and scream when Sandy was laying on top of Pitch was something that should be avoided, for the time being. He'd just... have to not wake Sandy up.

“I hope it wasn't that boring,” he muttered, pulling a pillow behind his own head and feeling no compunction at all at stealing some of Sandy's dreamsand to ensure his own restful night, “though maybe I should remember that for the next time you come down here to irritate me.”

Pitch fell asleep smiling, and refused until the end of his days to admit his dreams were filled with golden hobbits and black dragons swirling above flame-ridden skies.

 


End file.
